Glass Miles
by snuggalong
Summary: 'So many miles we've come, over broken glass and rusted nails sometimes is seems, but we braved it all because we were together. We've miles upon miles more to go, but it's time they were our own.' [Norway/Denmark, platonic and vague]
1. A Thousand Stars

**Glass Miles**

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><p>PART ONE: A THOUSAND STARS<p>

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><p>He finds him at the river, the last place he looks by default, but the only one he should have looked in in the first place, he supposes.<p>

The tiny dock is old and unsteady; it creaks ominously beneath his weight but somehow, miraculously, it holds.

Even before he sees his eyes he can tell he's a thousand miles away; he doesn't move even as the dock sways slightly beneath them.

He sits quietly beside him—or as quietly as he can, at least—leaning back to take up the other's position, hands holding his weight as he looks up at the clear sky, pondering for a minute before finally deciding to speak.

"...what exactly do you see up there that makes this the place I find you every time you vanish?"

There is no answer for the longest time, and it isn't until he is about to speak again that there is.

"...you wouldn't understand."

He cocks his head, still not looking at the other. "Oh really? Try me."

A soft chuckle echoes over the rushing waters. "You, who have never been alone by choice...how could you understand what it is to _want _to be alone?"

He turns swiftly, meeting dull blue eyes alight with an amusement he doesn't understand, and underneath it, a raw emptiness that he understands even less. "You wouldn't understand," the other repeats, and he frowns.

"Try me," he repeats as well, because right now he _wants_ to understand, more than anything.

The other sighs, soft, a sound quickly snatched away by the river, and turns his eyes to the sky once more, to something he cannot see.

"...the solitude is constant, even when others are not. And it brings with it silence, the best listener of all. It will never tell your secrets, even if you scream them at it...even if you want more than anything for them to be heard."

He kicks his feet idly in the water, uncomfortable with the sudden heaviness in the air. "...I can listen," he offers, unsure of what he is offering.

The other goes still, and then laughs again, only this time it is sad, resigned. "No," he says. "You can't. You can only hear. But you never listen."

His frown deepens. "Norge..." he says quietly.

Another sigh, deeper than the last, and a hand brushes his cheek, bringing with it a gentle gaze that hurts more than anything because he shouldn't need it so much. "Go home, _Danmark_," Norway tells him softly. "Leave me be. There's nothing you can do."

"How do you know that, if you won't let me try?"

"You're already trying...and already you try too hard."

He stands, finally, turns his back, yet even that simple distance feels like a thousand mile gulf between them. "...sometimes I think I'm trying for the both of us. Because you're too afraid to do it yourself."

A non-committal hum. "Maybe. We'll never know, will we?"

A breath of wind twists across the dock and with it a cool pair of lips brushes across his neck, fingertips flit through his hair, and a ghost whispers '_perhaps someday'_ in his ear.

He shudders and curls into himself, even as the wind fades away as though it never was and the footsteps on the dock finally fade into silence, because here he is on the edge of something he himself doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand because he is afraid of what it means.

And then the night is silent and he is alone, sitting on the creaking dock with nothing but himself and the ghosts of memories, and a pain in his heart that he hates and cherishes at the same time, because he finally understands.

He doesn't know how to be alone anymore without feeling lonely.

_- fin -_


	2. Dreams Left Unspoken

**Glass Miles**

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><p>PART TWO: DREAMS LEFT UNSPOKEN<p>

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><p>There is a soft smile on his face as he sleeps, and it twists his heart something terrible to see it. Because when was the last time that smile was there for him, and him alone?<p>

He can hold him close and pretend, but he knows the smile is not for him no matter how much he wishes.

And oh how he wishes because during the day all he has is that cold parody of a smile, that dark cynicism and amusement that he only bears because he knows at night—

—he can pretend this smile is his.

But during the day, when the empty spaces are filled with so many unspoken words and those that aren't empty are filled with words hurled like knives, this memory is all he has to cling to, because though he can pretend the words aren't his—

—they aren't they're _his_, the him that laughs and brushes it off like it's nothing even when they're breaking him inside—

—he knows they are. And he knows that this smile will never be his.

His fingertips thread through his hair, gentle as can be, brush against pale cheeks and even paler eyelids, and finally ghost over pale, smiling lips that never smile for him.

"Won't you smile for me?" he whispers into the empty silence. "Just once?"

There is no answer—he did not expect one. There is only the sad, heavy silence, broken only by their soft breathing.

A word tumbles into the silence, the softest ghost of syllables, and his breathing catches. Suddenly, the skin beneath his fingers burns, and he snatches them back, eyes wide and wild.

He flees because that smile hurts more than anything else and he knows that if he has to see it a moment longer he will break. He never sees the smile fade and pale eyes stare into the darkness, pale eyes that close on a single tear and later wake wide and wild and afraid.

Pale hands grasp the darkness searching for something to hold, something to drag him out of the memories that threaten the edges of his mind, but he finds nothing but cold emptiness and the fading echoes of words never spoken in daylight.

Those same hands fist in the empty sheets and he smiles, a broken, empty thing, and he wonders if the other can tell the difference. Or is a smile a smile, after all?

"I would smile for you," he breathes into the silence. "If I knew you'd love me even when there's nothing to smile for."

_- fin -_


	3. On Butterfly Wings

**Glass Miles**

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><p>PART THREE: ON BUTTERFLY WINGS<p>

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><p>The window is open to let in the sun and the wind, but the air of the room is heavy and it hurts to draw breath, should you enter.<p>

He does not enter. He cannot enter. His place is this niche beneath the window sill, grass matted and damp beneath his hands, the breeze cool across his eyelids, the bricks even cooler against his back, listening and not understanding—

—but he's alright with that.

Sunlight through the tree dapples across his face, lighting it in strange patterns of fire—in the room, a single beam lances across the shadows, a reflection off gold, illuminating for a moment ebony wood and silver strings, pale hands ghosting and gliding in the darkness.

The notes dance like butterflies over his head and he almost rises to grasp them, but his hands cannot reach—but then they are dark, and heavy, butterflies falling swift to the earth and vanishing and he wants to cry—both for their loss and for what has replaced them.

This heavy sadness in the air; singing, lamenting, almost...crooning for memories that are just that—memories. It hurts his heart in ways he doesn't understand, to listen.

Abruptly the music stops; a curse lights the air and with a clank and a clatter angry footsteps are his only warning before he is suddenly looking up into pale, furious—

—scared?—

—eyes.

"What are you doing here?" the other hisses, low and deadly as he leans over the sill, hands clenched pale and trembling upon it, still itching for the dance they were engaged in only moments before.

"...listening," he replies, and can see the surprise that lights those eyes, quickly hidden.

"_Why_ are you here?" they ask, exasperation plain.

He turns his gaze downward. "I'm always here," he whispers. "Don't you know?"

Exasperation turns to something unfathomable, and then to something heartbreakingly gentle. He starts as fingertips brush beneath his eyes: averts his gaze when they come away damp.

"Why are you crying?"

He closes his eyes and watches the ghosts of memories dance in the shadows to a melody only they can hear.

"For the butterflies," he whispers. "They...they were beautiful, once."

There is a long silence, thick with words they don't say—will never say.

"...they were," the other says finally, softly. "Once upon a time."

_- fin -_


	4. Back the Hands

**Glass Miles**

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><p>PART FOUR: BACK THE HANDS<p>

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><p>The sound echoes harshly in the silent hallway and even before the silence falls again the emotions go crashing through him like a crushing wave.<p>

Shock—at what he has done.

Regret—for what he has done.

Anger—at what he has done.

Guilt—for what he has done.

His hands rise, trembling, to cover his mouth—the image of the one suspended in the air, as it was moments before, burns into his mind and oh he feels sick, so sick, sick of himself and at himself and—

—what has he _done_?

He cannot see his eyes; they are hidden in the shadow of ice-pale bangs, by the unnatural twist his head has taken to the side that he has yet to turn from.

He cannot see his eyes and he does not know whether to feel relieved or afraid—afraid of what he might see there.

He lifts one hand—reaching, grasping, pleading—

"Halle..."

—and drops that hand as though burned when the other shies away, flinching, curling into himself and he still can't see his eyes—

"Don't," they whisper, voice hoarse and ragged, and he steps back.

"_You promised."_

Those words, breathed into the silence as soft as the silence itself, break him to pieces—tiny pieces of guilt and shame and anger and regret and memory because he remembers, oh he remembers what he promised—

'_Never again. I will never hurt you ever again. So please...stay...'_

He can see his eyes now. Pale, steady, broken in their reproach, and that promise is destroying him because he's broken it a thousand times over now, hasn't he?

He wants to run. Away from those eyes, the guilt, that promise, these hands that broke that promise—

He turns to flee, but even as he does hands snatch him back, turn him to face eyes now glaring with a deep, unfathomable anger.

"Don't you _dare_," the other bites out. "Turn your back. No matter what you've done...don't you dare turn your back on me."

He stares, frozen to the spot. Then slowly, so slowly, his hand lifts again, reaches out to hover just inches from one pale, damaged cheek.

The other looks him right in the eyes as he tilts his head to let trembling fingertips brush against that cheek, and he sees forgiveness there.

He sweeps him close and doesn't let go, won't let go, _can't_ let go—even thought he struggles briefly, he goes limp eventually and lets him be.

He needs this. They need this.

He can pray a thousand times to undo what has been done. Promise that promise a thousand times over again—if only he'll stay.

But here, in this moment, with pieces of their hearts scattered across the floor, all he can do is whisper to the silence, _"I'm sorry_," a thousand times over, and pray that it will be enough.

_- fin -_


End file.
